Album Review: Wrong Creatures - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

As one of the bands that ushered in the early-2000s garage revival, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's playbook is by now well-honed and there are few new tricks on this their eighth album.

Not that there necessarily needs to be: one of the advantages of being a throwback band is that there's an inbuilt timelessness that defies changing fashions and, while other bands approaching their 20th year might be tempted to experiment and reinvent themselves in a scramble to stay relevant, these strutting, leather-clad San Franciscans just keep doing what they do so damn well. Hence on Wrong Creatures there are stomping rockers in the form of singles King Of Bones and Little Thing Gone Wild - the latter a vintage BRMC party-starter complete with swaggering vocal, shrieking guitars and a cacophony of floor-toms and kick-drums - alongside psychedelic slow-burners courtesy of Ninth Configuration and Calling Them All Away.

Of course BRMC have always known their way around an angsty ballad, too, and Echo's Walk On The Wild Side-esque bass slurs give way to a soulful vocal that in the chorus vies with an ethereal, swelling guitar lick; while closing track All Rise's piano heartbeat and creaky strings drive an epic slow-build for Wrong Creatures' grand finale.